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If you read scientific reports closely, you will come across words such as error and uncertainty. What do they mean? If a teacher tells you that you made an error on a test, then you got something wrong. In everyday language, that’s what error often means – a mistake.

Written by Emma Bastian How do you weigh a dinosaur? It’s a simple question with a very complex answer.

A few months ago, scientists from the Large Hadron Collider announced they had found a new particle, one that could be the Higgs boson. The Higgs particle is thought to have properties explaining how other particles have mass. But the first signs of this new particle were detected over a year ago.

Imagine a flat spiral, similar to a snail’s shell, coming closer and closer to a point. Now imagine more spiral lines, all centred on the same point. This shape looks like the clouds over a cyclone, or a whirling galaxy.